Jenny McCarthy is preparing The Masked Singer fans for an epic season 11 premiere.
“I am so excited, and I know we say this every season, but I’m so excited for you guys to see the first show because the reveal is that big,” McCarthy, 51, exclusively told Us Weekly on Monday, March 4, while promoting the FOX series. “I mean, it’s so big. It’s, like, next level.”
McCarthy, who has been a panelist on The Masked Singer since its 2019 debut, added that the A-list contestant gave her “hope that we can have Beyoncé on someday because that’s the kind of star power that this person has.”
The television personality admitted that she didn’t correctly guess the star’s identity because she assumed they were too famous to do the show.
“In my brain I thought, ‘You know what? There’s no way we can get that big of a celebrity,’” McCarthy recalled. “It happens this season, first episode. Mind blown.”
The singing competition features celebrities performing songs while wearing elaborate costumes that conceal their identities. McCarthy and her fellow panelists are tasked with guessing who the performers are, aided by a series of clues revealed throughout the season.
Season 11 will feature a shakeup on the panel, with Rita Ora taking the place of Nicole Scherzinger, who stepped away to star in a West End production of Sunset Boulevard. McCarthy told Us that Ora, 33, was a “divine” addition to the show despite having “hard shoes to fill” replacing Scherzinger, 45.
“We have a strong chemistry, our family, so you never know how someone’s going to fit in. She was perfect,” McCarthy gushed. “She already did Masked Singer [in] the U.K., so she knows how to play the game. And then she’s funny, she’s smart, she knows how to sing, and she helped me a lot and I helped her a lot. So, we were a good crew together. I said, ‘Us sisters got to stick together.’”
McCarthy may value camaraderie among her costars, but she’s also highly competitive with them.
“They would all tell you the same thing, that Jenny is psychotic in terms of competition,” she quipped. “I act like it’s the Olympics, and for me it is. … I’m the weirdo that goes home after taping and I lay there. Do you remember the movie Beautiful Mind when he’s got everything on the wall? That is what I am doing every night, I’m literally putting clues together, so by the time I go back I’m like, ‘I think I have an idea.’”
Along with McCarthy and Ora, Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke round out the panel. McCarthy thinks that the show has gotten better over the years due to the panelists’ banter.
“We can have fun with each other in terms of teasing one another,” she said. “We’ve developed this chemistry to be such a family that me calling Ken a Bozo or making fun of Robin’s guess is just OK.”
Season 11 of The Masked Singer premieres on FOX Wednesday, March 6, at 8 p.m. ET.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
